


A Day in the Life of Penny Priddy

by merriman



Category: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-24
Updated: 2010-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-14 02:04:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/144138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's always something going on at the Banzai Institute.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Day in the Life of Penny Priddy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missmollyetc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmollyetc/gifts).



> I love this movie so much and I hope I did Penny justice.

Living at the Institute you couldn’t help but learn something every day. If you weren’t learning, you weren’t living, or so Buckaroo seemed to believe. Penny had spent the first week just learning her way around, figuring that counted well enough. The Institute was bigger than she’d expected. It was sort of like a college and sort of like a trade school and sort of like what she imagined a monastery was like. The place varied in terms of activity. Some days she’d wake up and wander out of Buckaroo’s room and there’d be a bunch of Blue Blazers in the hallways, hastily erecting a set of lasers. And then other days she’d hear music when she woke up and it would be four in the morning but the whole lot of them were outside under the windows, playing some experimental atonal jazz fusion.

This morning was a jazz fusion morning. Penny leaned out the window to see who was down there. Even though she’d been there a week she still didn’t know all their names, but she recognized Perfect Tommy and Reno leading the group and watched them for a few minutes. It wasn’t her taste, but that wasn’t the point, and if she listened close she could hear something interesting there under all the racket. But then the music shifted and she couldn’t hear it any more.

Down in the mess Mrs. Johnson was making sandwiches. Penny considered helping out, but much as she liked Mrs. Johnson, it just didn’t ever feel right. She’d always wanted to have girlfriends to gossip with. Always felt jealous of the other girls she knew who got together after school and gossiped and swooned over boys. But she’d never quite fit, and she didn’t quite fit here either.

Sandwich in hand (thanks to Mrs. Johnson), Penny kept walking, meandering through the Institute until something caught her fancy. The day before it had been an impromptu lecture on cryptography. Today it was Buckaroo, meditating in the middle of a labyrinth some of the others had drawn on one of the driveways earlier in the week.

Penny was wearing a dress. It was a little impractical for the Institute, but she liked standing out in the crowd. She sat down anyhow, somehow tangling her legs into a half lotus at the edge of the labyrinth.

“Hey,” said a voice from behind her half an hour later. She looked up but Buckaroo didn’t budge. It was New Jersey, hands in his pockets and hangdog look on his face.

Penny scrambled to her feet, which were numb after thirty minutes in that half lotus. “Hey.”

“Couple of us are going to go see if we can build a stage in the woods. They’re talking about doing some Shakespeare maybe. You up for it?”

Penny looked at Buckaroo, then back at New Jersey.

“I can’t act,” she told him. “I don’t think I can, anyhow.”

“Neither can I,” New Jersey admitted. “But hey, we could run the lights, right?”

Buckaroo still hadn’t moved and he didn’t look like he was going to for maybe the rest of the day. Penny shook out the skirt of her dress and squared her shoulders. He could meditate all he wanted.

“Sure. Yeah. Hey, you think maybe later someone could help me move my things?”

New Jersey glanced at Buckaroo before answering, seeming to contemplate his answer carefully. She’d noticed that about New Jersey. He’d been a lot more rash when they’d met, but he was slower to speak now. More cautious and thoughtful.

“Where to?” he asked as they headed away from Buckaroo.

Penny shrugged. “Somewhere else. Maybe one of those little cubicles they put the new kids in. You know, the monk cell ones with the cots.”

“Yeah?” New Jersey still had his hands in his pockets but he’d lost the look, replacing it with the curiosity that showed on so many of the Blue Blazers when they encountered a puzzle. Penny liked that. Being a puzzle.

“Yeah,” she told him. “I’m gonna be a student. Learn some things. Teach a thing or two myself.”

She headed off around the house, catching a bit of the music still going on. It was funny, she thought as they walked, New Jersey still thinking over what she’d presented to him. He’d be a little while. He was a medical genius but interpersonal things eluded him sometimes. The music had shifted in the time she’d been gone. Now it was some sort of hard rock version of the Nutcracker Suite and she could even pick out Tommy’s guitar at a distance.

As they walked through the woods the music started to give way to the sound of hammers and saws and drills. Slowly the stage was taking shape in the middle of the woods and the folks building it welcomed two more people to help out. They worked until the sun set and then all piled back into the house to grab whatever was in the kitchen before retreating to their various rooms and the bunkhouse and other projects for the nocturnal members of the group.

Penny made her way up to Buckaroo’s room. She’d been staying there since she’d arrived, but it was still his room. It would always be his room. He wasn’t there yet. He was probably still out in the parking lot, meditating in the dark.

Penny sighed and changed into a long t-shirt and shorts and sat down by the window. No one was playing jazz fusion or the Nutcracker but a lone trumpet was playing Taps somewhere in the house. Penny waited by the window for a little bit, listening to the trumpet, which might have been played by Reno, or might have been someone else she didn’t know yet.

The music ended just as the door opened and Buckaroo walked in.

“Hello,” he said to her with a slight half smile. “Long day?”

Penny lifted her head and nodded. “Yeah. I kept busy. Been keeping nice and busy every day.” She picked up her bathrobe and slipped on a pair of slippers. “Just like everyone else here. You know they’re building a stage in the woods?”

Buckaroo paused half out of his shirt, hands frozen over his buttons. “Really? They should do some Shakespeare.”

“I was thinking I could direct,” she told him. “I’m going to go sleep down the hall tonight. Got to be up early tomorrow.”

He gave her the same look New Jersey had earlier in the day. Like he was puzzling over everything he knew about her. But he was quicker than New Jersey. And he knew her better, even if he did know her through a Peggy-shaped filter.

“All right,” he said finally. “We’ll take your involvement with the Lectroids as your application. Welcome to the Institute.”


End file.
